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Women
by Annie Leibovitz, Susan
Sontag
Each
of the extraordinary portraits made by photographer Annie Leibovitz for
her book Women stands on its own. Looked at together, these
"photographs of people with nothing more in common than that they
are women (and living in America at the end of the twentieth century),
all--well almost all--fully clothed," writes Susan Sontag in the
book's preface, form "an anthology of destinies and disabilities
and new possibilities." Leibovitz, who in her years working for Rolling
Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair magazines has
photographed hundreds of celebrities, turns her lens on a wide range of
ordinary and extraordinary female subjects: coal miners, socialites,
first ladies, artists, domestic-violence victims, an astronaut, a
surgeon, a maid. What she creates is a reflection of contemporary
American womanhood that mirrors both women's accomplishments and the
challenges they still face individually and as a group.
Leibovitz demonstrates her own range as a photographer in this body
of work, shooting in the studio and natural settings and working in both
black-and-white and color film. She depicts model Jerry Hall wearing a
little black dress, a fur coat, and high heels, staring frankly at the
viewer from a velvet chair in a plush red parlor while her naked infant
son nurses from her exposed right breast. Schoolteacher Lamis Srour's
eyes--the only part of her face visible behind her heavy black
veil--illuminate a dark black-and-white portrait. Leibovitz frames
actress Elizabeth Taylor and her dog Sugar by their shocks of snow-white
hair. She captures four Kilgore College Rangerettes, a drill team, at
the apex of their kicks--white-booted legs pointing up, obscuring their
faces and revealing the red underpants beneath their blue miniskirts.
There are many more wonderful and unexpected images here, over 200 in
all. The delight in discovering them awaits readers. --Jordana
Moskowitz
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The Feminist Memoir Project:
Voices from Women's Liberation
by
Rachel Blau Duplessis (Editor), Ann Snitwo, Ann Snitow (Editor), Rachel
Blau Duplessis (Editor)
The
women of The Feminist Memoir Project give voice to the spirit, the
drive, and the claims of the Women's Liberation Movement they helped
shape, beginning in the late l960s. These 32 writers were among the
thousands to jump-start feminism in our time. Here, in pieces that are
passionate, personal, critical, and witty, they describe what it felt
like to make history, to live through and contribute to the massive
social movement that transformed the nation. What made these particular
women rebel? And what experiences, ideas, feelings, and beliefs shaped
their rebellion? How did they maintain the will and energy to keep such
an unwomanly struggle going for so long, and continuing still?
Memoirs and responses by Kate Millett, Vivian Gornick, Michele
Wallace, Alix Kates Shulman, Joan Nestle, Jo Freeman, Yvonne Rainer,
Barbara Smith, Ellen Willis, and many more embody the excitement that
fueled the movement and the conflicts that threatened it from within.
These stories tell how the world we live in changed. With The Feminist
Memoir Project, these activists contribute to yet another movement
project, the political work of memory.
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